Pages

Wednesday, 7 June 2017

Jeremy Corbyn is made of nails

Margaret Thatcher was known as the Iron Lady, and love her or loathe her it was easy to see why. She ruled with an iron fist, but even she was brought to her knees in the end. Not by the serial election loser Neil Kinnock, nor by the mainstream media, but by her own MPs who lined up to stab her in the back.When the Iron Lady resigned on November 23rd 1990 it was because she'd lost control of her own party.In the wake of the Brexit vote the pro-establishment Labour Party MPs lined up to stab Jeremy Corbyn in the back in the same way the Tory ghouls stabbed Thatcher in the back so they could fight over the carcass of the Conservative Party.The difference between Corbyn and Thatcher is a significant one. Thanks to the reforms enacted by his predecessor Ed Miliband the Labour Party is a democratic party in which the members, not the MPs get to decide the leader.After receiving an astounding 172 daggers in the back Jeremy Corbyn stood tall and refused to resign like the coup-plotters had hoped he would.

"If you want to remove me as leader, stand against me in a democratic leadership election!"

He delivered a counter-punch that left the coup-plotters reeling for weeks as they dithered over who to stand against Corbyn. In the end they picked the harmless enough, but hapless Owen Smith as their challenger.The leadership election went ahead, and despite a concerted vote-rigging effort to stop him, Corbyn romped home to an even bigger leadership election than the one in 2015,Jeremy Corbyn has always stood with the people against the political establishment, and when he needed them, the people stood with Corbyn and routed the coup plotters.After the rout Corbyn did something incredible and magnanimous. Something most leaders would never have the strength and integrity to do: He withdrew the daggers from his back and offered all of the backstabbers his hand of friendship!When Thatcher's MPs stabbed her in the back she had no choice but to resign. When Corbyn's MPs stabbed him in the back he taught them all a valuable lesson: That they are the servants of the people, not their masters.Now we come to Theresa May. The cowardly cardboard cutout of the Iron Lady who was parachuted into the Tory leadership (despite her dreadful record of incompetence and authoritarianism at the Home Office) when the Tory establishment bullied her leadership rival Andrea Leadsom out to the contest.For almost a year Theresa May had it easy.

Hardly anyone focused on her atrocious political track record because the Anyone But Corbyn wreckers had turned the summer of 2016 into an absolute circus of labour infighting at precisely the moment they should have been 100% focused on criticising the Tory Brexit farce (they were so arrogant and filled with hubris that they called an EU referendum they were so sure of winning that they didn't even develop a contingency plan in case they lost) and the continued failure of their crackpot austerity agenda.Theresa May has also faced an incredibly easy ride from the mainstream media, especially the print media. One of the most extraordinary examples was when the press paid no attention at all to the fact that she read out a tweet from a misogynistic, xenophobic extreme-right Twitter hate account in parliament as a cheap dig at Jeremy Corbyn.We all know the press would have absolutely monstored Corbyn had he read out a Tweet from a bigoted and misogynistic Twitter troll, but Theresa May was allowed to get away with it because the narrative the press were intent on selling is that it's Corbyn, not May who was the shockingly incompetent leader who is tolerant of bigotry.The Tweet incident was ignored by the mainstream press not because it wasn't newsworthy (it certainly was) but because it conflicted with the prevailing narrative they were all trying to sell.The press gave her an easy ride on her belligerent and antagonistic approach to the Brexit negotiations, the U-turn on her National Insurance hike, and then her U-turn on her promise of no snap elections.During her election campaign Theresa May has visibly crumbled. She tried to hide in her Tory safe spaces for the whole campaign, but on the few occasions she was challenged she reacted like a madwoman. She spewed paranoid nonsense outside Downing Street when she got rattled over a German newspaper report of that disastrous dinner with the EU bods. She churned out robotic non-answers and platitudes on the few occasions she was confronted by members of the public, and she outright refused to debate her political opponents for the entire campaign.Jeremy Corbyn on the other hand has faced a constant barrage of smears and abuse from the press and he's withstood it like a true statesman, even forgiving it all on the last day of the election campaign.Corbyn has suffered this relentless press abuse ever since he joined the Labour leadership race in 2015, so the pressures of the election campaign were like water off a duck's back to him.Theresa May has had a spectacularly easy ride for pretty much her entire political career, and under the first sign of pressure she wilted like wet cardboard.Theresa May might well still win a majority thanks to an unprecedented campaign of Internet dark ads, the staggering pro-Tory bias of the mainstream media, her evasion of debate and scrutiny and her cynical tactic of wrapping herself in the Brexit flag (whilst still, after stalling for almost an entire year, not explaining her Bexit vision), but anyone with any political sense can see that she's a total dud and that Jeremy Corbyn was the one who stood tall and grew in confidence throughout the election.I'm sure that after this election is over there will be no Conservative in the land willing to argue that Theresa May is anything like as capable a leader as Margaret Thatcher was, but Corbyn will stand above them both because win or lose, he's constantly proved his doubters wrong and conducted himself like a statesman in the face of undoubtedly the most savage and relentless smear campaign any UK party leader has ever faced and inspired millions of people to the Labour cause.

Jeremy Corbyn has proven himself a strong resiliant and statesmanlike leader and inspired millions to the Labour cause in a couple of months. Theresa May has been as strong and inspirational as wet cardboard.Win or lose these millions of energised people are not going away. Win or lose Corbyn is not going away.

Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.